High speed water jets are commonly used to cut or portion foods and other objects that are being transported by an underlying conveyor belt. The high speed, high-pressure water jets are emitted from nozzles that are mounted on carriages that ride along tracks disposed transversely to the moving conveyor. By timing the transverse movement of the carriages, it is possible to make cuts in a workpiece that are diagonal to the direction of the movement of the conveyor, and it is also possible to make curved cuts in the workpiece.
Moreover, cutter apparatus have been developed to also allow the nozzle to move longitudinally along the conveyor belt. This has increased the ability to carry out more complicated cutting patterns, while maintaining high precision. However, the use of individual nozzles has required the development of fairly complicated portioning machines when it is desired to utilize a number of nozzles, for example to achieve relatively small portions cut from a workpiece, or to increase the throughput of a conveyor line.
The present disclosure seeks to address the shortcomings of existing water jet cutting systems.